The weather this weekend cooperated for only 50% of our team - bright and clear, but below freezing with a chilling north wind. We agreed to put the AT trek on hold for a week, hoping for a minor thaw. In the meantime, I got antsy and decided to hike the MDT north from Newark toward Landenburg, PA. I had hoped to make it all the way to Chadd's Ford, but without maps I eventually found myself wandering hopelessly down former farm roads now encroached by McMansions, getting blown off the two-inch shoulder with every passing SUV as I peered down the road for any sign of a blue blaze. After a couple miles of road-walking I gave up and returned back the way I came.
The MDT trail through the White Clay Creek preserve in Delaware and Pennsylvania is beautiful, however, at any time of year. We've hiked this many times, but there's always something new to catch your eye. Today I noticed a beaver dam that I don't recall... but it's probably been there for years. Just for grins I packed my stove so I could boil up a hot lunch on a gravel bar, but freezing numb fingers quickly turned this into an exercise of speed-cooking. Never a good sign when you can sit and watch ice form while you're eating lunch.
I'm not going to count the miles I did this weekend, since I was just fooling around, but they totaled somewhere around 14 miles over two days. The map image shows how much of the trail we've covered so far, with my northbound extension tacked on. The blue markers identify the section end-points. At this scale, it seems like a fair amount, but if you were to see the entire map of the MDT, we've done just a smudge. No matter, they'll start to add up eventually.
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